There’s lots of design activity around how to bring more digital services to drivers, but the passenger often gets left out of the fun. So, it’s interesting to see this work from GM on how to enhance the passengers’ experience. For their Windows of Opportunity project, they focused on engaging children in the rear seats. Apparently passengers often feel disconnected from the surrounding environment. So, the project brief asked “to turn car windows into interactive…
 
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FastCompany recently posted a insightful analysis, definitely worth a read, of the challenges the auto industry faces as they work to embrace consumer electronics and other ditigal trends. The title begins “Cars Are Horrible Mobile Tech Devices…” and details the root of the problem: “Fast as they they may go, automobiles are some of the slowest-moving mobile devices in the industry, plagued by fragmented software ecosystems, unwelcoming development environments, and old-world product cycles.” Last year,…
 
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There are a handful of relatively new initiatives happening to better interconnect the wide variety of systems that make up cities. IBM’s Smarter Cities (as part of their Smarter Planet), and LivingPlanIT and their “Urban Operating System” are just two. They’re working to harness the complexity and range of data that make up a city — and making it all usable in seamless and integrated ways. But to the lay-person, they seem pretty abstract. Probably…
 
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I recently posted a link about research leading to creating a real-world holodeck. So it was interesting to discover these three films, created for Sony, which showed another technique for creating immersive experiences. Sony’s “trick” is to use projection mapping — which normally looks best from just a single static view point. They made the environment more flexible by attaching a PlayStation Move to the camera, so that as the camera moved, the projection adjusted…
 
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I’ve heard the term digital native a lot, and the idea of them — kids that have grown up with digital technology and for whom it’s a natural part of the world. But there’s a even stronger implication: that they understand it so deeply that they view the world fundamentally different than non-natives. This video (linked in a post full of great links by Chris O’Shea) really brought that idea to life. Fascinating and terrifying….
 
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Microsoft recently released a future vision video — looking at how people might get things done 5-10 years in the future. It’s a quite beautifully done piece, full of detail and scenarios. They’ve also put up a website which describes elements of the video in more detail. But what’s surprising is the intensity of the reaction to this vision. It’s getting a lot of abuse. From John Gruber (who further defends this comment in an…
 
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This new ad from IBM, promoting their Smarter Healthcare initiative is more idea communication than interface. But, it’s nicely suggestive of the complexity of information that doctors and patients need to deal with. And it’s a teaser for the potential of IBM’s Watson in the health care space. As a side note, sorry for the infrequency of postings here lately. I’ve recently switched jobs, and so things have been unusually busy. Hopefully I’ll be posting…
 
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The blog Huds and Guis has put together three great video montages of UI design from the 2001 film Final Fantasy. The film may not be all that great, but these UI sequences are a lot of fun to watch. Definitely UI candy! It’s an interesting collection of holographic displays, globes and spheres, small detailed text, and projections. Like many film UIs, the designs are pretty abstract — they’re gestures to help advance the story….
 
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Nike, as part of their Jumpman campaign has created a series of commercials called Dominate Another Day, or D3. And the really cool new blog, Huds and Guis, has posted some background information as well as all six videos. Head-up displays, augmented reality, and transparent screens; They aren’t the deepest fantasy UIs, but they’re still fun.

Here are three interesting vision scenario projects from Michaël Harbourn, a designer currently studying in Paris. There’s a fascinating aspect to these projects — I’m not sure if the student, foreign (non-US), or product-design orientation is the source. But his use of morphable surfaces, and quiet, almost meditative, presentation style, is pretty neat. Aeon is a transportation vision, with augmented reality and even the ability to block everything out and just relax. And Transcendenz, part…
 
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